Jackson Steals Geneva Tv Spotlight

And who? Yes, and Jesse Jackson. He wasn`t an offical member of the cast when the show opened, but when the two leading men decided not to say anything in the opening performance, Jackson did what any young understudy would: He took center stage.

His big break came when Reagan and Gorbachev reached one quick agreement

--no talking to the press, no public statements, not even any ``deep background`` briefings.

But nobody made such a deal with Jackson, so after he joined a group of American peace activists who got in to see Gorbachev shortly after the two world leaders first talked, Jackson became the principal source of news about the first summit session.

There were others, to be sure. The meeting with Gorbachev was attended by a few reporters and by 50 other peace activists.

One of them, Rev. Bruce Kent, who is general secretary of Britain`s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, reported that Gorbachev had described his first session with Reagan as ``constructive and serious,`` and had insisted that Soviet Jews were ``talented and creative, fully Soviet citizens,`` and not oppressed or mistreated.

But it was Jackson who led the discussion with Gorbachev and it was Jackson who rushed right down to the Hilton Hotel to be interviewed on the television networks, which, thanks to the time difference, were doing the live broadcasts of their morning shows.

Then, too, it was Jackson who, as ever, knew how to create one of those quotes that reporters can`t resist. Asked by NBC`s Tom Brokaw whether Gorbachev was ``charismatic,`` Jackson said, ``When one looks at the suit and tie he`s wearing, one sees a kind of Gucci communism.``

Actually, Gorbachev looked more like a proper Wall Street lawyer. It was Jackson, in a double-breasted blue suit, who looked more Gucci-ish. But

``Gucci communism`` is what is known in the trade as a must-use quote, even if its meaning is uncertain, even if its meaning is nonexistent.

Not only American television was interested in the Jackson-Gorbachev encounter. Moscow television played it prominently on its evening newscast.

Even before Tuesday`s blackout and Jackson`s public-relations coup, the Reagan-Gorbachev summit, like so many public events these days, was something of a television show.

There is a little secret about these events--summits, presidential debates, political conventions and the like. Almost everybody sees them on television, including the reporters who write about them and most of the television correspondents and commentators who suppposedly bring it all into living rooms from coast to coast.

When Reagan and Gorbachev first met Tuesday, for instance, only 32 American news media representatives were really there, and 8 of them were technicians and another 8 were photographers. That left 16 actual reporters in the ``pool`` covering the event.

So where were the hundreds of other news-hungry journalists? Right here in this great big ballroom in the Intercontinental Hotel, sitting behind long tables covered with the kind of green felt used on pool tables, tape recorders and portable computers at the ready, and watching Reagan and Gorbachev meet the same way everybody else did--on television.

In this case it is Swiss television piped into the press rooms here and at the International Press Center a few blocks away. The scenes shown back in the United States are shot by the four networks, which are always part of the pool.

The newspaper writers on the pool get together and file a ``pool report,`` for their colleagues, and the obligation is that they put everything important in the report, keeping nothing for themselves as exclusives. Violation of this obligation is not unknown.

``You get the panoramic view when you`re in the pool,`` said Mike Waldman of Newsday, a member of the Tuesday morning pool. ``On television you have to see what the camera shows you. But I couldn`t say I saw better than you did watching TV.``

This particular pool report provided the information that the two world leaders were ``making small talk, but the pool could not tell if they were actually communicating,`` that it was cold, and that ``a sloping lawn dotted with trees (is) declining toward the lake`` from the villa.

``You could almost set all this up in the White House press room, provide a sattelite hook-up so we could question (White House spokesman Larry)

Speakes, and do it all without leaving the country,`` said one senior television correspondent.

The reason you could only ``almost`` do that is that top American officials are often available here to provide important information as long as they are identified only as ``a senior American official`` or some such, though under the news blackout announced Tuesday, such briefings are against the rules.